PODCAST Channel Insider Podcast
“We are proud to embrace another digital platform in order to deliver expert commentary and insights on the
latest news from the communications channel.” David Dungay, Editor - Comms Business
Channel Insider Podcast
Comms Business is delighted to present the Channel Insider Podcast. This new initiative is brought to you in
conjunction with Knight Corporate Finance to bring expert Channel commentary to readers in an easily consumable
format. Each week David Dungay, Editor of Comms Business, is joined by market participants to discuss the biggest
stories of the week. Tune in now online
Adrian Sunderland, CTO of Jola
EP. 6 – Teams overtakes Slack
O ce365 has become the
defacto standard business app
in most businesses. I can’t think
of a business that doesn’t use
the Microsoft O ce suite and
the most cost e ective way to
buy it is through Microsoft 365.
If you use O ce 365 you get
Teams for free so it is a fairly
easy to adopt if you are looking
for a collaboration tool. We used
Slack before Teams was available
and enjoyed the collaboration,
but once Teams was available
we started using that because it
was more tightly integrated into
O ce. It’s not a surprise to me
any more than Internet Explorer
overtaking Netscape as a browser
when it started being bundled in
with Windows.
Adam Zoldan, Director of Knight
Corporate Finance. EP. 2 – IDE
Group shares suspended
“ is isn’t a great story for IDE,
acquisitions don’t always go well.
is was a merger funded by a
public nance raise which saw
Selection Services, a managed
IT business, acquired for £35m
along with C4L, a data centre
business, for £25m and later
a smaller IT services business
for about £5.5m. e idea was
to stick them all together and
suddenly you can cross sell
hosting and data centres to IT
businesses and IT services to the
data centre businesses. It looked
like an interesting story but the
wheels have well and truly come
o it seems. ey have had to
fund raise at fairly short notice
in the last six months, about
£15m just to keep it going. e
share price has currently lost 96
per cent of its value. We don’t
like to see it, inorganic growth
and investment in the industry
is normally a positive thing but
I think we can probably learn a
few lessons here.”
Dan Cunliffe, MD of Pangea
EP.3 – Channel pricing and
adding value
“It’s really down to the fact you
have to keep adding value to
the product and in some cases
you can improve the pricing
when the opportunity suggests
its important. From Channel
perspective 99 per cent of it is
B2B or B2B2B and then several
mouths to feed. On the vendor
side of things, they de nitely
have to deal with much tighter
margins but then as you move
to the end user the margins tend
to increase. Usually the partner
selling to the end users have
slightly higher margins which
comes down to them bringing
things together. Pricing wise, it
is really driven by o ering SLA’s
on your products, o ering more
value, trying to take away pain
when you are working with an
operator for example. We are
trying to create an easier way to
do business and there is a cost
for that. Sometimes you can’t
just say ‘I’m buying that product
at that price from the guy down
the road why can’t I get it from
you?’ We say its because of these
reasons, SLA’s, business backed,
making it simpler etc. Justifying
and creating worth in your
product is really important for
the whole Channel, its how you
stay alive.”
Tim Walker, Managing Director
of Aura Technology
EP.5 – Aura appoints Clive
Woodward to board
“I like the idea of accountability
and external oversight that
a business has by involving
non-execs. Whilst we may put
non-execs onto Aura’s board
which have very speci c IT and
managed services experience to
me there was no other name I
wanted associated other than
Clive Woodward. I think what
he has achieved in sport speaks
for itself, it’s at the pinnacle of
achievement, but also what he
has achieved in business, from
his leasing business which he
successfully sold when rugby
turned professional to creating
Hive Learning and all the other
coaching and non-excec roles
he does. It just said to me if we
are going to set ourselves out to
be the best possible business we
can be, and put ourselves on the
line in performing as best as we
possibly can do as a board, then
we want Clive involved.”
Listen on: CommsBusiness.co.uk, Soundcloud.com and iTunes
54 | Comms Business Magazine | September 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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